Teachers Desire Tools for Individualizing Curriculum

Teachers Desire Tools for Individualizing Curriculum

by Megan Goss

In preparation for the research I was to begin in a few months, I conducted six interviews with teachers from the Northern California school district I had selected to work with during the spring of 2005. Because my research was to address reading, my questions for these professionals all pertained to reading; for example, I asked them about their reading approaches, which materials they liked and regularly used, and how they used assessment in their classrooms.

One important point of commonality among all respondents was a desire to more closely monitor and address individual needs. All teachers had students they were particularly concerned about. They felt that, in their busy classrooms, they weren't always able to work with these needy students as closely as they wanted to. They also felt that they did not always know exactly what to do to push these students forward, even when given the necessary space to do so. These teachers were all searching for an expedient way to assist their students. Soon I was busy with my own research, but I did not forget the concerns expressed by my interviewees. One teacher, Jenny, became my friend. We continued to talk about issues in reading and literacy, and I suggested that she try using the Let's Go Learn assessment for the four students she was most concerned about in her class. Jenny has used the assessment several times during this school year. She teaches in a multi-grade classroom, and she had two first graders and two second graders for whom she held special concerns with regard to the progress they were making in reading. She chose to use Let's Go Learn's Diagnostic Online Reading Assessment (DORA) for these four children.

Jenny found DORA to be extremely helpful for a variety of reasons. First, it was easy and convenient. "Once I got it up [on the computer] I could just send the kids over. Then I could work with other students". The ones on the computer didn't need my help at all [while taking the assessment]" (Interview, 3/20/06).

Another aspect of the program Jenny praised was the reports. She told me that they were "incredibly thorough" and "very helpful for pinpointing areas of strengths and weaknesses in a student." Jenny told me of one child in particular who took DORA. He was a first grader, and the assessment showed that he had not mastered the phonetic principles that are applied when a silent e is added to the end of a word. After seeing this clearly through the assessment, Jenny quickly adapted the work she was doing with him so that a closer look at this phonetic "rule" could be taught. Jenny told me that in less than two weeks the student had learned to use this pattern successfully in reading and that he simultaneously leapt forward several levels in the leveled books he was assigned. Jenny credits this growth to her ability to quickly modify her curriculum to meet this individual student's needs.

Teachers are overwhelmed with the pressures of meeting increasingly difficult curricular demands. I believe that assessment tools such as those offered by Let's Go Learn can play a key role in helping teachers quickly diagnose and adapt their curriculum to meet a variety of literacy needs. Like Jenny, they will find that implementation is easy and requires very little monitoring. They will also find the individualized reports to be extremely detailed and helpful. Teachers can use the information from each assessment to tailor their reading programs to the individual level or to form groups with students who have similar needs. Let's Go Learn's assessment can offer teachers valuable and time-saving information so that their young readers can move rapidly ahead.

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